The Things We Must

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Evidias in Ilshenar
Dreams subsided in the darkness and she stared up at the stars as they twinkled, seemingly in and out of existence. Evidias could feel — more than understand what it was. It felt different, out of place somehow and it was impossible to describe how wrong it felt. But she could try to show herself how it was, and so she closed her eyes.
Above her a sun stood in the blackness of space and its light swallowed all of the stars around it until it blotted out their very existences and only itself and the darkness remained. It was so bright that she had to turn her head away. Below her was a field of flowers that spread out from end to end and little else. She moved a leg and felt the tiny strands of grass brush again her ankle. Green, vivid and new like the first tendrils of spring cautiously rising its head up from the hidden place where life recedes when winter wakes up from its deep slumber and turns the world white. The flowers dotted in between the field of green were shades of red so crimson they looked as if they could have been dripped from tiny cuts into being, pooling in the shape of petals around a tiny yellow center. All the flowers that were not this odd shade of red were crystalline blue like pieces of the sea floating in invisible glass and they moved as if continuing to float in an ocean that was no longer there and that they were no longer a part of it.
It was all so remarkably peculiar.
Slowly the ground around her grew brighter and the colors became wondrous for a few moments until suddenly it grew too bright, a glow enveloped everything until it was so bright that the whole world faded out in white light. She shut her eyes as tight as possible and could feel the incredible warmth rolling along her skin. It only lasted a few moments but it was enough to almost faint as she fell to her knees.
When she opened her eyes everything was blurry at first, as if the entire field was out of focus. As it began to pass, she immediately noticed that the green ground was gone and that bits of red and blue, singed at the edges and curled up upon themselves lay at her feet. They were scattered around her and not the flowers nor the grass remained unscathed for as far as she could see. Everything was dead.
In the very far distance there was something that had not been there before. It was all that seemed to remain. She placed one foot in front of another and in half a moment was off to a run. Then suddenly running was not enough and she spread her massive wings that had not been there before. The length of her long blue wings cast shadows on the ground as she darted through the air. Curiosity grew like a monster inside of her, until all that remained was the feeling of wanting to know what was inside of that strange place in the distance.
From the sky she could see the deep dark earth that rolled on for miles. There were no patterns, no footprints, no marks at all and it was as if the field had been burned out entirely by some unknown force that left no trace of itself. Her wings grew heavier as she reached the place in the distance, and it slowly became closer. Until finally at last she was upon it and drifted slowly to the ground, coming up beside the worn ruins of what looked like it had been a city once.
At first as she tip toed through it in human form all she could see were the remains of flowers and blades of grass in odd patterns. It was not until she reached down to touch one of them that a vision blew through her mind like a tornado obliterating a for-rest. For that split second she did not see little patches of flowers and grass in odd shapes. She saw bloodied and beaten corpses that lined the inside of the room. They lined the outside edges of the room in a circular pattern and some of them were marred beyond recognition, cut to pieces where they lay on the marble stone floors. Blood was splattered and smeared everywhere. She could not even count the bodies, there was ten of them, twenty, thirty, sixty, eighty of them thrown about the room in a circle like rag-dolls.
Her mind could not take the sight and she blinked her eyes, fell to her knees and looked around at the odd patterns of flowers and grass again. Knowing full what they really were. And if they were bodies… then was the field she had first seen a field, or something worse, terribly, horrifically, worse.

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